USA > Indiana > Sullivan County > A history of Sullivan County, Indiana, closing of the first century's history of the county, and showing the growth of its people, institutions, industries and wealth, Volume I > Part 10
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may hereafter fail to make the required reports shall forfeit his or her right to the use of the houses hereafter for private schools."
The first annual report of Superintendent Marlow, in 1876, states that there were 114 district schools in the county, and that while the school term was increasing, in many cases it was only four or five months long. Since 1873 the average wage of teachers had fallen from $2.15 a day to $2.11. He reported increased interest and attendance at the township institutes. The district schools, he said, were without any system or course of study. "If one of our higher schools were conducted on this principle for a single term, it would be declared a nuisance and disbanded." The compensation of teachers in 1879 ranged from $1.50 in Jackson township to $5.00 in Sullivan, for men, and from $1.48 in Jackson township to $2.25 in Merom for women. Cass township had school but 90 days, while the school ran 170 days in Carlisle, the average length in the townships being 116 days, and in the towns 140 days.
In 1882 Superintendent Marlow submitted to the county board a scheme for the graduation of pupils from the district schools. A series of questions were to be submitted by the different teachers, and a general average of eighty was necessary for graduation. In March, 1886, occurred the first graduation from the district schools, when the superin- tendent granted twenty-five diplomas.
In 1887 there were 71 colored school children in the county. In the colored settlement near Carlisle a separate school was maintained for these children, and for a time it seemed that the school must disband because no competent teacher could be found, as the supply of colored teachers was very limited. The Carlisle school had about 25 or 30 enrolled. After much difficulty a man was obtained to teach, but he was unable to secure a license. Then an old man who had taught some twenty-five years before was sought, but he had never had a license and
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could not pass the examination to get one. Finally John Bass of Carlisle was installed as teacher.
In September, 1902, Trustee James Scott of Fairbanks township took the first step toward the consolidation of schools, when he closed two schoolhouses and conveyed the pupils of the districts to the school at Fairbanks. This was not "consolidation" in the legal sense of the term, it being possible to abandon a district without surrendering. its separate identity, which is the result when two or more individual dis- tricts become a consolidated district. The central school at Fairbanks is now used by five districts.
At Graysville is one of the model rural schools of the consolidated type. Its manual training department has attracted wide attention from educators. The district schools about Graysville were abandoned from 1904 to 1907, and two more in 1908. Eight wagons are used to convey the children from the distant parts of the consolidated district, care being taken in all consolidated schools that the children shall not be compelled to ride in the hacks longer than an hour and a half each way. The school building at Graysville was erected some five or six years ago. About 230 children are in attendance, and a three-year high school course is maintained both at Graysville and at Fairbanks. An article in the Democrat in March, 1906, stated that George Bicknell's school at Graysville had attracted the attention not only of the state superintendent of instruction but also of many other prominent educators. Toward the end of the first year's work, the hand-designed books, hand illu- minated texts and symphonies, the book-cases, table and stools, leather sofa pillows and other efforts of the children were brought in and a display made which astonished the community. A printing outfit is also in the equipment, and practical work done in both printing and binding.
The Paxton consolidated school district comprises five original
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single districts in Haddon township, five wagons being employed to carry the children. The schoolhouse at Paxton is a new four-room brick building. There are at this writing 130 pupils, 95 of whom are brought to school in the wagons. There is a one-year high school at Paxton.
At Carlisle the town school is also attended by the children of adjacent districts in Haddon township. Three wagons convey 47 pupils to town.
At New Lebanon is one of the largest consolidated rural schools. This is one of the most modern examples of school building in the county likewise. The front half of the schoolhouse is about ten years old, while the addition was erected about two years ago. It is a 12-room building, with good heating plant and modern equipments. Six districts were abandoned and merged with this central school, and seven wagons are used to carry the 133 children. The high school has seven teachers.
In Jefferson township the pupils of one district (about 24) are carried to Pleasantville, and in Hamilton township the 14 or 15 pupils of the Creager school are taken to the Brodie school.
Altogether, twenty-nine wagons are in service for the conveyance of school children. The county has six incorporated towns, each with its school system, while in the country outside are 99 individual schools.
The report of Superintendent of Schools Park for the year ending in May, 1908, showed the enumeration of school population for the county to be 9,468, the townships showing a net loss of 157 and the towns a net gain of 73. The average daily attendance for the year was 6,969. The graduates from the district school were 188, not including the graduates from the eighth grade in the towns having. commissioned schools. The average length of the school year in the county was 147 days, being 139 days in the townships and 160 in the towns. The total number of teachers employed in the county schools were 191, 24 of them
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being in the high schools. Of the schoolhouses in the county, 76 were brick and 49 frame buildings, all of which were valued at $319,000. The average daily wages of teachers in the county at large was $2.92, that for grade teachers being $2.87.
In one of the monthly bulletins published by the state superintendent in 1908, the Mammoth school, four and a half miles northeast of Sulli- van, was declared "an ideal district school." The following description of the school is given :
Last October and November the writer visited several rural schools. The best district school visited is located in Sullivan county, about four and one-half miles northeast of Sullivan. This ยท school was visited late in October. The county and city superin- tendents, the township trustee, three rural school teachers and a minister visited the school at the same time. It is located in a mining district and there were fifty-seven children in the room. The building is a modern one-room structure, with two vestibules or cloak rooms and a basement for the furnace. The light in the room comes from the north side, which is taken up with windows reaching nearly to the ceiling. The lighting, heating and ventilation are as near perfect as they can be made. The building has been in use three years and is free from abuse. It looks entirely new. Every- thing was in neat order. The boards were well kept because the pupils take a pride. in keeping them neat. The assignments on the board were neat and definite. The order was as good as anyone may ever want to see, because every child was busy at work all afternoon. The instruction was excellent, the work in reading being unusually strong. "Spinning a Top" was made the basis of the first year reading work. The children furnished the material for this
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reading lesson. There was no estrangement between the teacher and pupils, hence they gave the most natural expression to their childish experience with the top. As the teacher wrote their stories on the board they realized that "language is the symbol of their actual experiences." The assignment in this lesson found its subject matter in the child's world, and as a result the expression was natural. The work in geography and spelling was of the same character.
But best of all was the fine spirit of the school. Every child was happy and was doing his best. Every child seemed to realize that it was his school and that its success depended at least in part on him. And when they sang their closing song and started home their hearty good-night showed that they believed in the teacher. And what was the secret of it all? The teacher, to be sure. He is genuine. He is in love with his work and he is not afraid to work. He lives in the community and knows the people. He is a great blessing, to the community, but he can not stay there. Not because he does not want to stay nor because the people do not want him to stay-but because there is a larger field of service for him. No .
wonder the trustee pays him $90.00 per month !
Those residents of Sullivan county whose memory goes back to the forties and fiftes recall a brick building that stood in Sullivan and was known everywhere as the County Seminary. It was the capstone of the public educational system of the time, since its range of useful- ness and benefit was larger than the state university because the majority of the counties in the state had such institutions. The funds accumulated from the fines, forfeitures and delinquencies, which by an early state law were to be converted into a seminary fund, had reached about a thousand dollars in 1845, and the county board then proceeded to erect
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a seminary building. The seminary was designed as an institution between the common schools and the university, and located at the county seat was open to all pupils in the county.
For seven or eight years the seminary maintained its place in the educational system of the county. With the adoption of the constitution ' of 1851, the policy of keeping up county seminaries was abandoned; and the grounds, buildings and other property of the seminaries were ordered to be sold and the proceeds turned over to the common school fund. The people had become satisfied that it was impracticable to carry on county high schools, and that all the energies of the state in relation to popular education should be concentrated in the support and improvement of the common schools.
The first purchaser of the old seminary building failed to liquidate his purchase, and the building reverted to the county and continued to be used as a schoolhouse for a number of years. In 1856 L. Leroy Booth advertised that he would begin a select school in the seminary building at Sullivan on January 7th, teaching Latin, Greek, German and the higher branches of mathematics in connection with the common branches. The ground occupied by the seminary was sold to the Sullivan school board, and in turn sold, in 1872, to the Masonic lodge.
For some time in the fifties the village of New Lebanon was the educational center of the county. This was largely on account of the activities of Professor A. P. Allen, principal of the New Lebanon Academy, which had been founded in 1853 and was under the manage- ment of the Methodist church. The school was taught in the church building until the academy building was completed in 1855. The school flourished until shortly before the war, and during its existence many young people received training in branches that were above the grade of the average school of that day. There is the flavor of the older Vol. I-9
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educational ideals in the following list of the branches then taught in the school-algebra, chemistry, composition and rhetoric, outlines of history, natural philosophy, natural theology, botany, trigonometry, logic, mental philosophy, moral science, surveying, astronomy, geology, ele- ments of criticism, mechanical philosophy, and history of English literature. Does a modern curriculum produce better men and women than this old-fashioned one did?
An advertisement in the Democrat, December, 1855, states that the building of the Indiana Conference Male and Female Academy had just been completed, and names the teachers as follows: Professor A. P. Allen, assisted by Mrs. R. J. Allen, and Miss Mary Brock. Massom Ridgeway was president of the board of trustees.
Union Christian College.
In the Sullivan Democrat of September 20, 1856, is a card announc- ing that the Merom Bluff Academy, a new institution; will open October Ist, with Mr. E. W. Humphreys as principal. He and his wife were the faculty, and the old court house building, abandoned on the removal of the county seat a dozen years before, and which stood on the site now occupied by the Merom town school, was the quarters of the academy. The academy was conducted with success for several years, until the proprietor, while on a trip abroad, conceived the plan of making a col- lege out of his school.
A convention of delegates of the various conferences of the Christian church met, November 4, 1858, at Peru, Indiana, "to consider the interests of the Chirstian church in the west and the propriety of erecting an insti- tution of learning in the state of Indiana." The convention decided to
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"recommend the establishment of an institution of learning in the state of Indiana, to be under the control of the Christian conferences in the state and vicinity." A committee was appointed to decide upon a loca- tion and to take all necessary steps to carry out the recommendations of the convention. The committee decided upon Merom as the location, and the name Union Christian College was adopted as the name of the new institution.
The first sessions of the new college were held in the old court house, as the five-story brick building was not completed until 1862. Thomas Kearns, of Merom, was credited with the skill and executive ability which resulted in the successful construction of this building. N. Summerbell was the first president after Mr. Humphreys, and was succeeded by Thomas Holmes, and he by T. C. Smith. The last named resigned in 1882, and was succeeded by Rev. Elisha Mudge.
In 1902 the college received $50,000 endowment, as a result of the will of Francis Asbury Palmer, formerly president of the National Broadway Bank, of New York City, who offered the college $30,000 provided $20,000 was raised by other subscriptions. Dr. J. C. Jones, president of the college, worked with others vigorously to secure the funds. The death of Dr. Jones occurred in 1907, and he was succeeded by O. B. Whitaker, who is now president of the school. Union Christian College is an accredited normal school. Its average attendance is about 125, the students for the most part living within a radius of forty or fifty miles of Merom. Recently there has been completed a handsome dormitory for the women residents of the school. The school is on a fairly prosperous basis, and its half century of active educational and moral influence has been felt in the lives of hundreds of men and women whose names are synonymous with civic and business integrity.
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Ascension Seminary.
To say that Ascension Seminary is now but a memory is to miss the finer and real appreciation of the influence of an institution of this kind. The material existence of this school ceased nearly a third of a century ago, yet the hundreds who, if opportunity were offered, would rise and protest their loyalty to the institution and their sense of gratitude for the benefits received within its walls would effectually prove the enduring character of its work. The old seminary still lives for the men and women who attended it, and with the passing of their generation, others will continue to inherit the good influences set in motion at an earlier period.
It is claimed that the Ascension Seminary was the pioneer normal school of Indiana, and its work is said to have inspired the erection of the state normal school at Terre Haute. The origin of the school was described a few years ago by Murray Briggs (Democrat, July 2, 1903). In 1861 Prof. William T. Crawford, then scarcely twenty years old, began teaching a common school at Farmersburg. The editor of the Democrat was then superintendent of instruction for the county, and was so pleased by the results exhibited during a visit to this school that he recommended all the teachers of the county to close their schools for one day and take an opportunity to visit the school at Farmersburg. Professor Crawford's services at once became more valuable as an instructor of teachers than in his former capacity, and the importunities of those who desired to place themselves under his instruction led him to open a small normal school in a building which in 1903 was a buggy shed. He also began the erection of a building of suitable dimensions for his proposed school, but when it was well under way he left it to raise a company and go to the front. On his return in 1865 he refitted
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the building, engaged an assistant in Prof. David Shoemaker, and for- mally opened the Ascension Seminary as a normal school for the training of teachers. By 1872 the school had outgrown its building, and Captain Crawford then arranged to consolidate his school with the high school of Sullivan, to which he was summoned as superintendent. From that time until 1876 he conducted this department as a normal institute in connection with the regular town schools. In the opinion of Mr. Briggs, the chief forte of Professor Crawford lay in his ability to impart his wonderful enthusiasm to others, and hundreds of students became suc- cessful teachers because of this faculty. To have been a student in Pro- fessor Crawford's school was considered an "open sesame" to employ- ment as teacher, and the fact that over two thousand of his former pupils followed teaching as a profession would tend to prove this assertion.
Some of his associates in conducting his normal school, besides Mr. Shoemaker, already mentioned, were Charles W. Finney, John T. Hays, A. P. Allen and W. H. Cain. An interesting advertisement of the seminary in 1869, while it was at Farmersburg, is the following: "The schools will open the fall and winter term on Monday, Aug. 16th, 1869. Young men and ladies desirous of obtaining a good Practical education or of taking a Scientific course will do well to attend this institution, as the aim of the instructors is to elevate the standard of teaching. Lectures will be given each term by the Principal William T. Crawford on the 'Theory and Practice of Teaching,' also lectures on Moral Science by Drs. J. Barbre, C. W. Finney and D. L. Shoemaker. Also instrumental music on Piano or Melodeon if a class of ten desires to take lessons. Tuition $10. Miss Alice S. Hawkins, teacher.
After the normal school was transferred to Sullivan the attendance in this department was about one hundred and fifty, many of whom came from the surrounding country and boarded in town during the
-
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school term. One of the early observances of the arbor day custom occurred in April, 1874, when, at the suggestion of the editor of the Democrat, the students of the normal department met to plant the school yard with trees. Chiefly evergreens were brought, and after the planting dinner was served on tables set the length of literary hall. The sessions of the normal school were held on the third floor of the recently com- pleted Sullivan school building.
At the opening of the Sullivan schools in 1872, after the consolida- tion of the seminary with the graded schools, the faculty under Professor Crawford consisted of Professors Cain and Allen, Miss Sarah Cain, Miss Doris and Miss Debaun. At the close of October, 1872, the principal reported the total attendance of the Sullivan schools to be 501 pupils, ninety-one of whom were of foreign birth or parentage. The number in the normal department was 174, in the grammar school 105, and 220 in the primary department.
Two interesting reunions of recent years have had the associations of the old seminary as the binding tie of the occasion. In August, 1902, at the old settlers' picnic in Bennett's grove at Farmersburg, a reunion of the old students was held, and among them the following: John C. Chaney, Rev. W. R. Halstead, Hon. W. A. Cullop, I. H. Kelley, Dr. George F. Plew, L. F. Donham, Rev. J. H. Strain, Prof. H. W. Curry, Hon. R. H. Catlen, A. A. Beecher, S. Stark, H. Z. Donham, William M. Moss, D. W. Henry, L. K. Stock. The following year another reunion was held, this time in the old frame seminary building itself, which had been converted in the meantime into an amusement place known as Brunker's Hall. Of those present, fourteen were residents of Farmersburg, and eighty-seven were from other places.
Many former pupils of the Sullivan and Carlisle schools remember William H. Cain, who was principal of the Sullivan schools for several
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years in the seventies, and later filled a similar position at Carlisle until advancing age caused him to resign, and he returned to Sullivan, where he died, August 9, 1896. He was seventy-five years of age, and had lived in this county about twenty-five years. He was a member of the Masonic order.
A few years ago, when the first examinations were held in the United States for the Rhodes scholarship prizes, Frank Aydelotte, one of the young students from Sullivan county, was among the successful com- petitors. He went to Oxford in 1905. He had already acquired his mas- ter's degree from Harvard, and had taught in the California state normal and at Indiana University. Since his return from his studies abroad he has joined the faculty of the University of Indiana.
As a scientist and educator, one of the most distinguished citizens of Sullivan county, was John W. Spencer. He was born in Salem, Indiana, in 1824, and was one of the first students of Indiana State University, though he was unable to complete his course. While Dr. D. D. Owen was making his "Geological Reconnoisance" through Indiana in the late thirties Mr. Spencer was carrying mail from Lawrence county to Greencastle. The eminent geologist traveled in company with the mail carrier, who proved to be not only a capable guide but also an enthusiastic disciple of the science of geology. This early association and training furnished Mr. Spencer with the special branch of learning to which he afterward gave much attention and in which his labors were effective in the advancement of geology. He was one of the pioneer school teachers of Sullivan county, taught subscription schools until free schools were established in the fifties, and continued in the practical work of education for over forty years. He assisted in the geological survey of Sullivan county in 1870, and in 1871 was elected a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, and later was
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chosen a fellow of the association. He was called "one of the most diligent, deserving, and, in certain lines, accomplished scientists in the state of Indiana." He was the first secretary of the Sullivan county teachers' institute.
CHAPTER VII.
TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION-THE RIVER TRADE BY FLATBOAT AND STEAMBOAT-DAYS OF THE STAGE COACH AND ROAD WAGON.
The subject of means of communication and transportation recurs again and again in the history of the county. Ever since men began to live on the earth, the matter of going from place to place and carrying things from place to place has been of vital importance; and the higher the development of society the more perfected become the methods of such communication.
It would be impossible to conceive of our country in its present state of civilization without the facilities for movement and transportation which men have devised and improved during the last hundred years. The problems now presented in the moving of material and persons from place to place are among the most serious and perplexing which engage the attention of communities, states and the nation.
Cities and towns grow in population accordingly as they are conve- niently situated with respect to transportation facilities, or as these facili- ties are supplied when needed. An agricultural district, however fertile, will be improved to the point of profitable production only when means
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are at hand or are provided by which the products may be readily and economically taken away to the markets.
These economic principles find many illustrations in the history of Sullivan county. The county has had its Indian trails, its paths blazed through the woods, its primitive state and local highways, its water routes, its graveled pikes, its railroads, and its electric lines, each accom- panying a new degree of development and marking a new era in the welfare of the people.
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